Friday night, dec. 13th, Mom and i had spent the afternoon at the Whitney Museum and started to make our back uptown. it was relatively warm and rainy, and we started walking towards a bus stop. we found one, and then finally a bus pulled up…but then it just sat there for a while. and then the driver turned the motor off . and then he got out of the bus. and walked across the street.

so, never mind about our idea of riding above ground and seeing the sights. there was a subway stop just across the street so we headed down there.

we got off at 42nd street and walked towards bryant park where they had a christmas market. not a lot of people there because it was raining. it’s weird, but being around so much stuff to buy really made me not want to buy anything.

there’s the chrysler building, looking cool in the foggy, rainy night.

we walked into the side door of the library. there was a special J.D. Salinger exhibit, but we’d have to check our bags and umbrellas and for some reason we just didn’t feel like doing that. so i went in first while mom stood outside the exhibit room. there were so many things in there – letters to and from salinger, manuscripts – so many things but i kept thinking “i have to hurry up and get out of here because mom’s waiting,” so i didn’t linger.

mom went in and came out later and exclaimed about all the wonderful things she’d seen so i had to go back in and look for myself.

we should have just checked our stuff.

we stopped in at the map room, which was so cool.

somehow i managed to get a picture of the tree without too many people in it. it feels now like christmas was a million years ago.

this is my favorite photo from the library, the lion with the wreath around its neck. in the opening animated 3D sequence of the Rockettes show, i remembered that they put wreaths over the lions, and i liked that that’s how it really was.

we didn’t linger at the library because i wanted to see the christmas market plus all the other shops at grand central station.

bad idea.

very bad idea.

we went inside at about 5:15. so all the commuters in the world were there, basically. the sound was deafening and we just wanted to escape. I have distinct memories of being in there and it wasn’t very crowded, but clearly this was the wrong time.

we headed out into the rainy night and made our way closer to Times Square, dodging other people’s umbrellas. We stopped in at some nice open space in some office building where there were table and chairs and plants; some guys were sitting around playing chess, and other people were hanging out. i looked on my phone for any nearby restaurants and found an italian one that sounded good and was about a block away, so we headed there. It was called Tony’s and sounded very popular.

and yes it was = when we got there just a few minutes later the guy at the door said there was something like a 2 hour wait. really? i asked him if he knew of any nearby places that wouldn’t be quite so busy and he helpfully gave me a name. Patrick’s, just a couple blocks away. Yay for that!

i told mom that we needed a Tmes Square photo because we hadn’t taken one.

We got to Patrick’s which was right in the middle of the Times Square chaos and went inside. it was two stories and enormous, and our wait was only about five minutes.

They ushered us upstairs where it looked like we were all tourists. But that was OK, at least we were out of the rain.

When we sat down i got this sweet photo from Kevin, who went over and hung out with Mom’s cat Hobbs every single day. Good kitty!

We split a bottle of sparkling Moscato which was quite delicious.

And then I got a half-dozen oysters which were delicious but Mom hates them as much as kevin does so she didn’t even want to watch me eat them. So delicious!

We split some delicious chicken parmesan and roasted asparagus. This place wasn’t quite as loud as the loud bar we’d eaten in on Wednesday night, but it was still mighty noisy.

I liked this cool neon sign above the bar downstairs as we were leaving.

We were in plenty of time to see our last show, which i’ll report on soon. It’ll finally be my last posting from our trip, way back in the last decade.

ok then,

mrs. g. hughes